


The sky bends before breaking, but I`m still sleeping.

by carefulfleshgnawer



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carefulfleshgnawer/pseuds/carefulfleshgnawer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The journey is long. The mission is harder.<br/>They`re just three hostile kids in a even more hostile world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The sky bends before breaking, but I`m still sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i forgot what i wrote here and no beta  
> pretty sure the ending is shit  
> i`m so sorry

They are taught well. Taught strict and throughout. Fast and merciless. It`s tough learning, but they have to bear with it. They learn as well as they possibly could. They'll be warriors someday. Warriors show no mercy and show no fear and  they'll have to, too. On the battlefield, they won't be children but weapons. Battalions. Fighters.

Better get used to it now.

\--

The wall is high enough to kiss the sky. High up and slate gray. Almost intimidating. There are horrors on the other side, they've been told.

Bertholdt finds there is a thrill to this. He feels like god, looking down on bacteria. Tears the rock right at the seams.

\--

Reiner feels nothing as the massive body of the warrior picks up speed, collides. But he's close enough to the ground to hear the screams, make out the faces. These animals look almost humanoid.

\--

Annie doesn't have to do much. She just raises her voice to a scream, calling the titans. There are clouds of dust and piles of debris in the damn dirty city.

She just wanted to get it over with.

\--

They've been here for three years. Two on the prowl, bowed low in the streets- scavenging hunting, hiding, waiting, lashing out and robbing. That time had done nothing to fondle affections towards these wall-dwellers. Two years among livestock. Two years against what had been described to them as the worst of the worst - oh, about how many atrocious beings the trainers had told them, about the murderers, the rapists, the thieves and the slavers, the corrupted bourgeois, the illiterate proletarians, the gypsies, the manipulators and all other manner or sinners.

Two years.

(Bertholdt had fumed over how fast they`d all ran to their precious inner walls, had wished countless times the wall-dwellers had been more dumbstruck by the strike, had wished death on more than had received it.)

(Reiner had stolen food from the homeless, burned down two houses after robbing them, beat up people in the town`s square. And hadn`t regretted it afterwards.)

(Annie had broken more bones, more noses and arms and hands than she could count. As far as she knew, all the starers and savages had deserved it.)

\--

And so they had lived. And so they had believed. The only lucid, sentient beings fenced in with rabid animals. It had been scary. It had been trying. They had cried and had nightmares together, shared single handfuls of bread and radishes or potatoes or carrots, and, on forever rare occasions, meat.

But they had been but tight-knit hostile children in an even more hostile world. Now they were slightly older, slightly more temperate and cunning. And frail. The past year these children had lived among other children, more innocent than the warriors but still relatable. Almost likeable, honestly.

That`s when the saplings of guilt had grown from the seeds of abhorrence, their small, leafy branches sickeningly ticklish to their lungs and hearts, their roots like heavy rocks in their stomachs.

Had their teachers taught them wrong?

\--

And Bertholdt looks at them and sees no threat. (except when Eren seethes with irrational anger how he would murder all titans, and he feels as if he is being targeted personally and has to resist the urge to rub at his neck, to wipe at the cold sweat and place a feeble manner of shield over the nape) And he looks at them as they look at him, and they see no threat in him. They think of him as a comrade. And many have come to him for advice and company and many have come to just talk. He had interacted with the enemy that didn't look like an enemy anymore, but like children and like friends and it was so confusing. Why were they like this, this wasn't what they had been told-

Not that it mattered. Yes, this didn't matter. They would hate him if he wasn't shrouded in lies. They would want to kill him,  would kill him, cut him open, pour out his guts and make him pay. Oh,  how they`d make him pay .

It`s bitter in the way it is acidic. It hurts and he can never look into their eyes unless they somehow initiate it. And he mumbles and adds into the conversation and his senses play tricks and he is nervous and why is it like this?

It doesn't matter but why like this? This is hard. So hard. He wants to give up. Wants to go home. The trainees like him. He wants to like them and wants to hate them. Wants to pretend they're animals, just like before but they're human and he can't close his eyes to that. Not anymore.

Raw nerves and no respite, he sits inside the hornet`s nest. It's stupid and hard but it`s a mission. 

Whatever. Just pull through.

\--

Reiner looks at them and sees friends.Sees comrades and wonderful bright and interesting people that should be given a chance. They’re all so kind and fun to be around and they look up to him like a brother. And he helps. And he advises and bellows out his laughs and steps in when trouble starts. He is at the center of the warmth that is social contact. They're all alike, after all.

(but his mind shifts sometimes and some memories have a habit of fading and he tries not to dwindle on it too much, even if it feels like he has forgotten something very important and he is confused by the meaningful looks he is sometimes given by Bertholdt or Annie which can`t decipher or understand. He and Annie aren't even that close, after all. They've barely ever spoken. And he`s learned Bertholdt`s habit of saying the  oddest thing s. No matter, they're still friends, still brothers in arms, still soldiers.)

\--

Annie looks at everyone and sees potential danger. The world is her enemy, her father had said. She believed him, even though she hadn't seen him so long and his face had started fading from her mind, his vice cold grip from her being.

But these enemies were smart, befriending her like that. Or, trying to. Kind gestures and warm words and pats on the back and platonic jokes. She took what she wanted, left the rest, gave nothing back. She was smarter than them, no matter what they thought. They had gotten to Reiner. Bertholdt would be harder to crack. But she was impenetrable. Stone cold and steel hard and black-hearted and fire-eyed. She knew very well nothing could be trusted. Anything was possible. She was here to kill them all. Every single wall dweller.

(and the warmth in her chest at the cadet`s attempts at socialising meant nothing, her want to snicker when teaching Eren to fight was a joke and her loneliness was proof that she was on the right path.)

\--

The days grow short before they grow long. A year more. Half a year more. Winter snows and ice. Spring leaves and blossoms and the smell of greenery. Ticking by like seconds in a timepiece.

It nears, rearing its ugly head in their minds. It's it the second coming of judgment day or just a second massacre?

Bertholdt thinks about the question near constantly. The rest of his time is spent worrying over his second performance. He'd have to transform  again.  Will it be easier or harder? Will he even be able to discern their faces? He could imagine them being strangers. Danger.

But no. That's stupid. He shouldn't delude himself like that. They were never meant to be friends and any lingering attachment would be like white-hot branding iron after they were done. The guilt enough to eat them whole.

'Don't feel sorry for your victim .'

The thought staggers him. The realization swells and sticks in his throat.

Ah, they weren't the bad guys? They weren't as monstrous as the wall-dwellers believed ?

They were definitely not saints, that much was sure. Bertholdt grimaces and gnaws his Cheek from the inside. Tastes like iron.

Yeah. Someone had to stain their hands with blood. It just happened to be him, this time.

\--

(They still look like ants from up there and he is almost scared by how little remorse spurs in his chest as he sends the gates flying, debris and dust and sand, broken sticks to crack the bricks, break the glass apart.

He feels a little lonely though. Annie isn't here. Reiner isn't  here . He's alone and he's on top of the world, looking down and crashing through.

He guesses he'll have to smash the other portcullis himself, too.)

\--

(He doesn't make it before they patch the hole. The disappointment and feeling of failure are heavy in his heart and chest. There's no one to share it with.)

\--

Reiner is lucid for the days they try and get Eren during the brief trip outside the walls. Annie almost gets captured. Bertholdt stays mute on that one.

\--

Them down the drain a again is his sanity, and in castle Utgard, Reined looks at his brother like a weirdo when he opens his big, stupid mouth. He'd just wanted the warrior back.

(He wasn't always like this, he used to be a-)

\--

Annie is alone in Sina, between the dusty streets and the humanoid bastards. She doesn't like them. They don`t bother her. Their mission seems distant, like it doesn't touch her at all. Doesn't matter this deep in enemy territory. What had happened in the forest of monstrous trees had been bad, but it had been. What`s gone is gone, what`s done is done.

\--

Reiner isn't thinking right when he reveals them for what they are. It`s just, he`s exhilarated to remember and might burst if he didn't share the information. It`s just that Eren is mingled with their plans and standing so close and if they're lucky this could be so easy

(it`s never easy, not for them)

Mikasa lunges swift and efficient and cut-cut-cuts the muscles in their arms, their necks and panic boils hot it boils cold and prickles their hackles, that was close, too close- and steam.

And escape. And a wail. She won't let her family go, she'll keep a vice-tight grip around them as long as she can keep them safe.

\--

Bertholdt is absolutely furious. He`d never understood ‘seething anger’ before, but it`s clear what it means now. As if there is sizzling and hissing heat in his brain, in his shoulders, chest, hands, fists.

He yells at Reiner. Explains in a loud voice just why what the other had done was stupid and unnecessary and idiotic and ‘why didn`t you consult me, you egomaniacal fucker?’, and it`s so loud, his eardrums are about to burst. He`s never done this before. Reiner yells back. How he`s the leader (you don`t deserve to lead us anymore, you`re unreliable), how he knows what`s best (you can`t even face reality without you piss-poor delusions). He doesn`t look like a kind older brother anymore. Eren and Ymir are still out like broken lightbulbs.

The birds have flown away. The trees aren`t moved by the roars. The leaves whisper, indifferent.

\--

Annie isn`t here either. She`s sleeping. Again.

\--

The legion comes to take them back. The shifters aren`t ready for such an attack. They are washed asunder, under hordes as their captives turn their tail to run away. Ymir comes back. Eren doesn`t.

The fight dies at some point.

\--

Atop the wall, the wind howls. A slow hiss and a whistling overtone. It sounds like a seashore. Th seashore by their village. Closing, his eyes Bertholdt imagines he is home again. Reiner soaks in the sun. He really has missed it so. Ymir stares off the wall, to the others and wonders if this is right.

They`re out of breath as much as they are out of luck, out here.

So they sleep.

(but it`d be sweeter if there was a lullaby)


End file.
